The Causes and Consequences of the Great Irish Famine

Principal Investigator: Alan Fernihough
Research Assistant: Áine Doran
Funded by: The Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. ES/N017323/1)
Research Assistant: Áine Doran
Funded by: The Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. ES/N017323/1)
Project description: The Great Irish Famine was a watershed in global history. It was the last major famine to occur in a Western economy, and had a long-run impact both in Ireland and further afield. This research project, funded by the ESRC, re-examines the Famine using the wealth of newly-digitised data sources and cutting-edge methodologies from the fields of econometrics and spatial statistics.
Research questions:
Further information about the project is available on this website.
Research questions:
- To what extent was Pre-Famine Ireland’s poverty driven by overpopulation?
- What key factors explain the loss of population between the 1841 and 1851 censuses?
- Do these aforementioned factors differ between mortality compared to migration?
- In what way does temporal variation in demographic events recorded in parish registers differ over the 18th and 19th centuries?
- Can we measure the economic, social, and demographic impact of the mass migration of the Irish to Britain?
Further information about the project is available on this website.